The room was filling with smoke. Behind the desk, by the open window, Augusto Da Silva – the cut-out – straightened up from the wastepaper bin, a surprised look on his face.
Instinctively going for the burning document, Mac didn’t notice the man to his right until he shouted out. Mac turned to him as the guy reached for his gun. It was Amir Sudarto, the towering Kopassus thug who’d interrogated Mac that night in the Ginasio.
In his brief moment of hesitation before Mac could swing his gun, Amir lashed out with a roundhouse kick to Mac’s right hand, connecting with the inside wrist bone and sending the little Colt flying.
Seeing Mac was momentarily off-balance and distracted by the pain in his wrist, Amir used the chance to aim a stamp kick to the solar plexus which sent Mac flying backwards into the plasterboard.
As he hit the wall, Mac saw Da Silva bending over the bin as Amir pulled his gun. Using his momentum off the wall to bounce back at Amir, Mac grabbed his right wrist as the gun came around. Headbutting Amir in the face, Mac dropped to the ground with his assailant, slamming his forearm across Amir’s nose as they landed, spraying blood across the room.
Amir’s gun fired as they struggled for control of it, Mac now kneeling over the fallen man’s chest, throwing a knife-hand at his throat and then waiting for a split second before dropping the mother of all headbutts into his face. At the last moment Amir moved his face and Mac’s forehead glanced off the side of his attacker’s skull and hit the carpet, stunning him slightly.
Amir threw Mac to the ground by the hair. As he felt fingers going into his eyes, Mac let go of the wrist-lock he’d found. His wrist free, Amir pulled the gun around to point at Mac. Seeing a chance for a clean shot at Amir’s head, Mac lashed out with a straight left punch, connecting flush with Amir’s left temple and dropping him like a sandbag.
Grabbing at Amir’s SIG Sauer, Mac leapt to his feet as Augusto Da Silva’s gun levelled at him. Tossing the SIG Sauer to Da Silva – as if giving it to him – Mac used the lawyer’s momentary confusion and inexperience with a gun to launch himself across the desk at the man.
Bringing his left forearm down hard on Da Silva’s wrist as he landed on the other side of the desk, Mac knocked the handgun from his grip.
Spinning expertly, as if matadoring a bull, Da Silva let the bulk of Mac’s momentum go past him, taking only a minor hit from Mac’s left shoulder. Picking himself off the floor, Mac took a kick in the jaw which staggered him back towards the still-smoking rubbish bin. Wanting to reach in there and pull out whatever was burning, Mac could only steal a quick peek before Da Silva lashed out with a roundhouse kick to Mac’s mouth followed by a perfectly balanced one-two-three punching combination, which Mac managed to block and back away from.
Great, thought Mac as he heaved for breath: a lawyer who knows kung-fu!
‘It’s over, Augusto,’ barked Mac through his mashed mouth. ‘Just let me have the file.’
‘Think you’re the big man, eh?’ snarled Da Silva, advancing with equal parts poise and desperation. ‘Locking a man in a car trunk? Well where’s that big ape to save you now, McQueen?’
Blocking Da Silva’s thigh kick with a raised knee, Mac jerked to his right as a straight left sailed half a centimetre past his nose, giving him an opening to Da Silva’s exposed left temple. Mac lashed at the open target with a straight right but Da Silva was quicker, simply shrugging enough to glance the punch off the point of his shoulder. Mac still had momentum on his side, and followed the failed straight right with an elbow to the teeth, which turned into a forearm to the throat. Grunting and staggering back, Da Silva didn’t see Mac’s stamp kick to the groin, a shot that connected with the pubic bone, bringing Da Silva down to Mac’s height and allowing Mac a big uppercut off his left hand. Connecting perfectly on the point of Da Silva’s chin, the tall lawyer briefly lost his balance but collected himself as Mac tried to force the advantage and get a choke-hold on the bloke.
Throwing a fast round-fend with his left hand, Da Silva whacked Mac’s right hand out of the way and flat-handed him on the bridge of the nose, forcing Mac’s face upwards against the set of his neck and his body. Falling to the side, Mac struggled for balance, his nose busted and eyes filling with tears as he tried to keep contact with Da Silva. The bloke liked to swing those long arms and legs, and if Mac could stay close he might just out-mongrel him.
Grabbing a handful of Da Silva’s silky hair, Mac endured three fast punches in the face in order to get a second hand onto the hair and use the double-fist hold to tug the head around. Swinging punches wildly, Da Silva connected with Mac’s cheekbones and chin. Suddenly, Mac jerked upwards with the hair, and then pulled downwards with a snap of both hands, driving Da Silva’s face into the corner of the glass-covered desk, spraying blood across the files and blotter.
Hands writhing up, Da Silva clawed for eyeballs but Mac twisted his face away from the long hands and pulled back on his hair-hold. Then, throwing his hip into the taller man, he used the leverage of the hair to initiate a hip-throw, tipping the taller man over and slamming his head into the floor with a sickening crunch. Mac knew he’d hurt him enough to finish this if he wanted Da Silva dead.
‘One of these would have been cleaner,’ came Jim’s voice from behind as Mac stood over Da Silva, heaving for breath and pinching his nose to stop the bleeding.
Jim had his gun on Amir Sudarto, whose fingers had stopped a centimetre short of retrieving Mac’s Colt. Pushing Amir away, Jim threw Mac’s gun back to him and rushed to the smouldering rubbish bin. Kneeling at the wastepaper bin, the American reached in and came out with ashes.
‘Shit!’ he growled.
‘Watch the other guy, mate,’ said Mac, pointing to Amir. ‘I think Augusto wants to speak.’
‘Fuck you,’ mumbled Da Silva. There was a huge gash across his forehead from his collision with the desk and his voice was slurred.
Kicking him hard on the point of the chin, Mac watched a tooth fly as the lawyer’s face snapped back, laying him flat on his back.
‘No, Augie – fuck you.’
Moving to the desk, but keeping his eyes on Da Silva, Mac checked the drawers of the desk. There were calculators, cell phones, dictaphones and statements from the Bank of Singapore, a Darwin branch of the ANZ Bank and a weird-looking bank statement from the Phnom Penh branch of Koryo Bank – the Koryo had been established by North Korea’s general staff, for what was officially called ‘joint ventures with foreign countries’.
‘Thing I love about you lawyers,’ snarled Mac, waving the statement at Da Silva as he tried to sit up, ‘you want to get paid by everyone – coming and going.’
‘Fuck you, Skippy,’ mumbled the lawyer through his hand.
‘Am I going to find Operasi Boa in this desk?’ asked Mac.
Da Silva laughed, and Mac stood over him, looking him in the eye.
‘I won the fight, Augusto – without the big ape. So now I’m asking and you’re telling, okay?’
‘Gotta go, buddy,’ said Jim.
‘Okay,’ said Mac, still panting. ‘Let’s take them with us.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Jim.
‘These guys are all we’ve got – besides, I think I’ve worked out what was happening,’ said Mac.
Amir suddenly rushed at Mac, Jim swinging his gun to take a shot. Gunfire resounded in the office and then a window was breaking. Shards of glass exploded as Jim and Mac swung their guns and fired, but Amir was horizontal through the space where the window had recently been.
Moving to the jagged hole, Mac looked down and saw Amir Sudarto climbing out of a hedgerow. Jim fired and shots hit the concrete car park as Amir sprinted out of view.
‘Shit,’ said Jim. ‘Was that Amir Sudarto?’
‘That’s him,’ said Mac, heaving for breath.
‘Then we’ve got about five seconds before Kopassus arrives,’ said Jim.
Mac grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the desk and stemmed his nose. ‘We can’t
leave him,’ he said, nodding at Da Silva.
‘Okay, we take him. But if he causes trouble, I’m gonna whack him, okay?’ asked Jim, loud enough for Da Silva to hear. ‘No one – especially not some failed lawyer – is going to hold me for one second longer than I have to be in this hellhole.’
‘That’s the choice, Augusto,’ said Mac, ‘and you have one second to decide.’
‘I liked you better as a blond,’ said Da Silva, spitting a chunk of flesh from his mouth as he stood. ‘But you must do me favour.’
‘What?’ asked Mac, checking the Colt.
‘Hold the gun to my head when we leave – these malai have no sense of humour.’
CHAPTER 55
Jim’s driver pulled the Mitsubishi into the shade of some trees after a twenty-minute drive east of Dili along the coast road. Any further east and they’d start running into army and militia roadblocks.
The support staff at the law office, and Senor Carvalho, were locked in a storage room and now Mac pulled Da Silva out of the back of the car by his hair.
Moving down to the beach, they found a secluded place behind a stand of trees, and sat Da Silva down on the grass while Jim’s driver stood guard by the road.
‘You wrote Operasi Boa, didn’t you?’ said Mac, his nosebleed having finally set.
‘No comment,’ said Da Silva, not so brave now.
‘That’s a nice lawyerism, isn’t it?’ said Mac quietly. ‘But it wasn’t always Augusto the lawyer, was it?’
Looking down at the sand, arms tied behind his back, Da Silva didn’t answer.
‘Let me see – Augusto goes to university on a military scholarship, he gets a law degree, starts his five years in the army, does his officer training, and then the boys from Kopassus get hold of him, right?’
Da Silva said nothing.
‘You were never really special forces material – you were always going to be head-shed with that big brain and fancy degree, right? But you complete Kopassus basic, and then suddenly you work out what they want you for. Intelligence section, right?’
‘No comment,’ said Da Silva.
‘Oh yeah, the good old boys from Kopassus intel – trained you to be a spook, then set you up with a law firm so you could always cover their tracks. Making every torture, detention and execution legal, right, Da Silva? Maybe even some property confiscations, right?’
‘What do you want, McQueen?’ flashed Da Silva. ‘You can’t get me off the island, so you have to kill me or torture me.’
‘I want to know what’s in Operasi Boa,’ said Mac, slow and calm. ‘I want to know who’s running it and what the goals are.’
‘Or?’ asked Da Silva, squinting up at Mac.
‘Or I tell Benni Sudarto you ratted him out, turned on your Kopassus brothers. I’ll tell him we pulled that ambush in Memo based on you squealing.’
‘He wouldn’t believe you,’ croaked Da Silva.
‘Perhaps. But I’m gonna have fun trying.’
‘What’s my guarantee?’ asked Da Silva. ‘What about my family?’
‘That depends on the quality of the information,’ said Mac, face stony.
‘The first stage of Operasi Boa was to get executive orders signed by the minister for health,’ said Da Silva. ‘It was a military operation to immunise the East Timorese against certain strains of pneumonia which start as a virus, incubate in humans and become bacterial diseases.’
‘They become contagious?’ asked Jim.
‘That’s my understanding,’ said Da Silva. ‘I’m a lawyer, not a doctor. The scientists were working on a mass-vaccination project.’
‘Of whom?’ asked Jim.
‘Well, it was originally called BOACL, so it covered the populations of Bobonaro, Oecussi, Ainaro and Cova Lima.’
‘Why those places?’ asked Mac.
‘I don’t know,’ said de Silva, looking up. ‘I suppose they’re rural communities, native enclaves?’
‘Where did Lombok come in?’ asked Jim.
‘Lombok is a joint venture between a Kopassus company and a North Korean consortium. It makes the vaccine.’
‘Wasn’t Lombok also making the Boa virus?’ asked Mac.
‘I don’t know,’ said Da Silva. ‘I told you – I’m a lawyer.’
‘Okay,’ said Mac.
‘My job was to tidy up the orders so they’d be signed off in Jakarta and Kopassus could make all this money from the fees they’d charge – apparently the World Health Organisation pays organisations to do this and the Asia Development Bank makes interest-free loans. Then, two months before Soeharto was gone, a high-powered major-general came into my offices.’
‘Haryono?’ asked Jim.
‘Let’s call him Major-General, okay?’ asked Da Silva, noticeably scared. ‘He was with my intel controller -’
‘Amir?’ asked Mac.
Nodding, Da Silva continued. ‘The general wanted it shortened to Boa and incorporated in a military operation.’
‘Hidden?’ asked Mac, thinking back to Rahmid Ali’s final words.
‘Disguised is a better word for it,’ said Da Silva. ‘I had to rework some clauses of a battle order called Operation Extermination so they alluded to Operasi Boa without spelling it out. You’d really have to be looking for Boa in that document.’
‘The purpose of this?’ asked Jim.
‘They wanted a signed battle order that covered them legally. They were using the power vacuum of Soeharto’s fall to get away with it, I suppose.’
‘So what was Operasi Boa?’ asked Jim.
‘It was the same vaccine program,’ said Da Silva. ‘But it changed the delivery slightly.’
‘Yeah?’ asked Mac.
‘Yeah, rather than vaccinations delivered by needles, into the skin, they shifted it to what in English is called a line-source delivery system.’
‘Which is?’ said Mac.
‘It means you spray the agent – but when it’s written in Bahasa Indonesia, it looks like you’ll vaccinate villagers by lining up the patients.’
‘Nice,’ said Jim, giving Da Silva a clip over the ear. ‘Ever heard of a vaccine that can be sprayed on people?’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Da Silva.
‘Your bosses are planning to put that disease into the villages, they’re not immunising anyone,’ said Jim, angry.
Looking pleadingly into Mac’s eyes, Da Silva shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘We’re talking about Extermination,’ said Jim, snarling in Da Silva’s ear.
‘That’s the operation name,’ said Da Silva, confused. ‘It’s about deporting people across the border, isn’t it?’
‘We’ll see,’ said Mac. ‘When is Boa happening?’
‘Same time as Extermination – the day of the ballot result. Maybe waiting for the right weather for the spraying.’
‘So you depopulate an area yet you’re trying to save the villagers from this super-pneumonia?’
‘It was strange, and I guess that’s why Maria -’
Silence fell on them as the surf pounded.
‘Tell me,’ said Mac.
‘Does she have to be in this?’ asked Da Silva. ‘She’s young and idealistic.’
‘Tell me,’ said Mac, harsher.
‘Maria was put together with me by Cedar Rail – the Australian intel. She was talking with me in my office and she must have seen Operasi Boa when I was called away. She had an attack of conscience – she copied it.’
‘But we miss out?’ said Mac, annoyed that Da Silva had burned the document.
‘Um, no,’ said Da Silva, slow. ‘I burned it, remember?’
‘Yeah,’ said Mac. ‘So Cedar Rail didn’t get the document that he’d been after?’
‘No,’ said Da Silva, looking Mac in the eye. ‘Cedar Rail didn’t want the Operasi Boa document – he wanted it destroyed.’
‘Destroyed?’ yelled Mac, moving at Da Silva. ‘Why would Aussie intelligence want to destroy it?’
‘That’s what he wanted me to do this morning,’ said Da Silva, gulping, obviously worried he’d triggered another attack.
‘But to destroy it?’ snapped Mac. ‘You must have got it wrong, mate.’
‘No, McQueen,’ said Da Silva softly. ‘Coded message this morning – told me exactly where it was. The codes were correct.’
‘At the Resende?’ asked Mac.
‘Sure,’ said Da Silva, now enjoying seeing Mac off-balance. ‘I was surprised because suddenly he knows where this document is hiding.’
‘I bet he did,’ said Mac, seething. ‘I fucking bet he did.’
CHAPTER 56
The first shot exploded out of Da Silva’s chest. The second took most of his head away before he collapsed in the sand.
Mac dived for the ground, fishing for his Colt as he joined Jim behind a small sand dune. Looking up to the small cliffs under the coast road, they scanned for the shooter.
Three shots in quick succession plopped into the sand, the final one less than a foot from Mac’s boot.
‘The guy in white, behind the central rock,’ hissed Jim, peeping over the dune.
‘I can see him now,’ breathed Mac, checking for load and safety. ‘What’s he got?’
‘Sniper rifle,’ said Jim, his back heaving. ‘Automatic action.’
Shots rang out from the car park, where Jim’s driver was waiting, and the sniper ducked behind his rock.
‘Let’s go,’ said Jim. Standing, they hurtled behind trees and sand dunes as a hail of bullets tore through the foliage.
‘How many?’ Jim asked his Timorese driver, as they joined him in the lee of the Mitsubishi.
‘Two at least,’ said the driver.
Opening the boot, Jim pulled out two M4 assault rifles and a handful of mags as bullets zinged into the steel of the open lid, narrowly missing him.
‘Fuck!’ he spat as he hit the ground, handing M4s to Mac and the driver. While Jim keyed the sat phone, Mac ducked up and loosed a couple of bursts of three-shot at the rock.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ asked Mac, crouching back behind the car and seeing Jim on the phone. ‘No pizza delivery round here, mate!’
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